Friday, July 18, 2008

Crime and Justice Festival, Melbourne

I'm off to Melbourne for the weekend to attend the Crime and Justice Festival. It has a great programme with a mix of real life justice issues and crime fiction. And an added bonus will be meeting up with AustCrime Karen and Sunnie, and if past get-togethers are anything to go by, there's bound to be plenty of food, booze and laughter.

This is the second year the festival has been held. Two of its patrons are Ian Rankin and Kerry Greenwood. The international guest this year is Irish author Declan Hughes, and local authors include: Peter Temple, Barry Maitland, Leigh Redhead, Garry Disher, Jarad Henry, Lenny Bartulin, Robert Gott, P.D. Martin, and more. This should be a fabulous weekend.

So, the packing's all done, the wake up call booked, all I have to do is snatch a few hours sleep ... and decide what books I'm taking. Throwing a few clothes in the bag is no problem, but deciding what books get to make the trip with me is much a much more agonising process. There's the books for reading, and the books for signing. And how much room will I need to leave for new acquisitions?

We're attending nine sessions in all, so I'm bound to be exhausted at the end of the two days, but the really great thing is I get to do it all again in a month's time at the Melbourne Writers Festival. The programme's just out today, and although there are a few bright spots, overall it's rather disappointing for crime fans. Still the gathering of 'the coven' is always a lot of fun, and this time we have a couple of newbies joining us, so I'm sure we'll find fun ways to fill in the time.


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